


paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde (go soak your head in a good strong insecticide)

by NotAFicWriter



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Drinking, F/M, Percy De Rolo Is A Sloppy Drunk Pass It Along, Please drink responsibly, Pregnancy, Vex'ahlia Is A Sleepy Drunk, the two are NOT happening at the same time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-29 23:30:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAFicWriter/pseuds/NotAFicWriter
Summary: In which a great deal of drinking and carousing is had, with only the requisite amount of piggyback rides and lost keys.





	paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde (go soak your head in a good strong insecticide)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you very much for ladyofrosefire for helping me so much with this fic, and happy second wedding percy and vex! i tried really, really hard to have this up before the episode. title is from "the chemist's drinking song" by john a. carroll, which feels very percy.
> 
> (percy has shit taste in alcohol, pass it on.)

Percy doesn’t necessarily remember what it was they were supposed to be celebrating tonight. It had something to do with Grog getting initiated as the Grand Pubah, which then turned into a celebration over Pike teaching him his letters, and then-- and then something, he supposes, because they wound up  _ here _ .

The Journey’s End is not Percy’s favorite bar in Whitestone, far from it. If there is one thing the city has cultivated a healthy supply of during the Briarwoods occupation, it’s places that serve alcohol, and of all the pubs and taverns that dotted Whitestone’s streets, he’d rather have been anywhere else, really. He understands the appeal of sticking to tradition, but he thinks it best that the tavern not serve ale brewed during his father’s coronation.

But at that point in the night, this far in their cups, this is the only tavern in their pub crawl that has yet to politely throw them on their ear. Saviors of the town or not, a self-respecting establishment could only tolerate so much of Grog belching half the alphabet.

So Percy’s here, nursing a short glass of sloe gin with some distaste, when Vex blinks slowly and rests her head against the top of his arm.

“Hi,” he says.

She says, “Hmm.” and closes her eyes.

She looks very comfortable already right where she is, but she adjusts here and there unhappily until he sighs and leans aside to kiss the top of her head. She hums again, contented.

“Are you getting tired dear?” Percy asks, knowing full well that given five minutes and no disturbances, she’ll happily doze off right here. They’re practically sharing a seat already, half-leaning into each other for the past hour, and she’s been known, in her drunker fits, to sleep in less comfortable spots.

“I think,” she says, “that last drink was a touch overboard.”

He, having told her as much himself when she called for it, asks with utmost innocence, “Oh, was it now?”

“Shh,” she says, swatting at him with her eyes closed and still meeting his chin with all the accuracy of a sharpshooter. “Don’t be a dick, darling.”

Despite the warning, Percy still laughs at her, even as he brings up his arm to support her shoulders. He doesn’t get to see Vex this heavy-eyed very often - around the campfire shifts they’ve shared, if she was tired, she seldom externalized it, seeming to flick from sleep to consciousness as easily as taking off a glove. At home, she goes to bed hours before him, and rises at dawn, long prior to when he’s gathered the motivation to untangle from the covers. Save for the occasional morning she alerts the rest of the Hunt and stays in, unbothered by the sun peaking through the blinds, he rarely gets to see her so somnelent and relaxed, and so feels compelled to cherish the opportunity.

Somewhere along the fourth drink of the night, she’d taken her hair down from its plait, and Percy raises his hand up to smooth a lock away from her face. “It’s fairly late,” he says, keeping his voice low, “we ought to make our leave soon, if you’re ready.”

Vex yawns. “So eager to take a woman home, are you, your Lordship?”

“Terribly so,” he says. “Desperate, in fact, to have you in my bed, snoring before I even finish unlacing your boots.”

She presses a hand to her chest, over her heart, as though trying to still a flutter. “You make such sweet promises, Percival.” Her legs are folded up under here, and it takes some unwinding and stretching for her to get to her feet again, linking her arm in his and tugging him up with her.

There’s still a lowball glass out on the table they were sitting before, filled halfway with half an amber dram, and Vex eyes it with a measuring glance as they make to their feet. Percy, unable to help his curiosity, thumbs at the rim of the tumbler, smoothing out the condescension there. “What were you drinking, anyway, dear?”

“Oh, no,” Vex says, “it’s a peat whisky, darling, you won’t like it.”

Percy nods. Then he lifts the tumbler up to his mouth and drains the last dregs of the drink, in a quick motion, resisting the urge to flinch once it hits his tongue.

It’s a remarkable drink, which tastes very nearly like licking the broadside of an unkempt dairy barn.

“Mm,” Percy says, holding his mouth shut out of a distinct fear of dribbling over the front of his shirt.

“Oh, Percy,” Vex cooes, coming up to pat his cheek. It’s a caring gesture, and he appreciates it, even though it does feel more as if she’s calming a spooked horse. “I did warn you you’d hate it.”

Percy clears his throat before attempting to speak again, not minding the dry burn of alcohol as much as the burnt-leather smokiness. “No, it’s fine,” he insists. “I may be allergic to bog bodies, is all, dear.”

She laughs at that, the kind of witchy cackle that has her throwing her head back and squinting her eyes with delight. She’s beautiful all the time, but it’s especially noticeable, he thinks, when she’s laughing at him.

They don’t say goodbye to every person in the clearing tavern, but he lets Vex lean sleepily on his arm while they make the rounds, saying goodnight to Grog and Pike - who are still well in the swing of things, with a neat little row of shot glasses before them - and to Keyleth and Tary, Vax having already drunk himself into a stupor at the end of the bar, his head resting on his folded arms. Vex tweaks his ear and tells him she loves him when he snorts awake, and then they go off into the street, out through the doors of the tavern, and into the night.

The sky is just barely turning a milky blue at the east, when they start home. The streets are thin with people, only a couple here and there ambling home, or setting to early work, the bakers rising early to proof their dough, the coachmen up and patting their horses clean with flat brushes. Vex grimaces briefly towards the inching sunrise, and Percy can hazard a guess that she’s dreading the morning, having to warn ahead of her absence in the patrol, but for now, she leans her head back against his shoulder, and they walk, arm-in-arm, towards her house.

Vex’ahlia is a sleepy drunk, not a stumbling drunk. After all, she went up from death twice without wobbling, so it would take much more than a rare overindulgence of liquor to have her walking gracelessly. If he has to describe her gait at the moment any which way, Percy would say she walks rather like a cat with a bell collar - with absolute poise, but putting one foot ahead of the other very carefully, very mindfully, and very,  _ very  _ slowly.

They make it about three or four city blocks before Percy sighs, as dramatically as he can muster, and parks them at the side of the street, moving to stand in front of her and bending his knees. “Come on up, I’ll carry you the rest of the way.”

Vex gasps, feigning being scandalized. “Darling!” she said. “The Lord of Whitestone, letting his girlfriend ride him in the streets, deep into the little hours of the night. What will people say?”

Contrary to her words, she already begins hooking her arms around his neck and letting him inelegantly haul her onto his back. He says, “They’ll say:  _ my gods, that’s a handsome pack mule. _ ”

She cackles, tucking her head into the curve of his neck. “The handsomest.”

Percy is not a particularly strong man - stronger than the average person, maybe, but by far not the strongest in their party - and so he can’t really guarantee that they’re moving any faster with him carrying her on his back, with his knees already starting to protest. But the walk home from here is short enough, as if he’d protest the idea that he needs a good reason to have Vex nodding off on his shoulder.

“I could  _ so _ carry you, you know,” she says, as they’re making up the walkway to her house. She sounds half-asleep, but determined. “The same amount of distance, even. Double it.”

“Of course, dear,” he says, coming up to the door and turning around to prop her up against it. She slides part-ways down before catching herself, shaking her head from side to side to wake herself up. Folding her arms, she leans herself against the doorframe, determined to stay awake, despite the heaviness of her eyelids.

It’s an endearing moment - it is. But for a moment, Percy remembers the City of Brass, them lolling against the doors of the Mansion, them coming in a second too late, and then sprawling on the entryway in a feverish daze. It’s still a little fresh, and always closer to the surface than he thinks, coming in idle moments he’d rather be present for. He touches the line of her jaw, compulsively, to see her look at him. She smiles, more sober than she was a minute before, and cups her hand over his.

She unlocks the door, they go inside.

The climb up the stairs is precarious and slow, but they make it, somehow, without falling and breaking their necks. Vex stubs her toe on the top stair and hisses, “Fuck, motherfucker,” and continues to climb up in serial expletives all the way to their bedroom, hopping on one foot. Percy takes a right to find the pitcher of water she’d left before they headed out, expecting this, and pours them both tall glasses of water, draining his before he follows her inside.

Vex is already face-up on the bed when he enters, plucking at her shoelaces and grumbling when he pulls her to sit up, but she takes the cup without putting up a fight and places it on the bed stand when she’s done.

“Don’t fall asleep with your shoes on,” Percy says, sitting at the corner of the bed and starting on the buttons of his shirt, finding them much harder than they have any right to be. “You’ll track mud on the bed, and you’ll be grumpy about it in the morning.”

“You carried me here,” she says, rolling over onto her back again. “ _ You’ll  _ track mud on the bed.”

“My shoes don’t get muddy, Vex. These are the streets of Whitestone, they don’t dare muddy my attire, not without written permission, and scheduled meetings to discuss the notion.”

Vex answers with a snore.

Percy shakes his head, and reaches over to carefully arrange her so she’s sleeping on her side, propped by a pillow. She murmurs something incoherent as he does.

His knees will hurt in the morning, he’s certain of it by the protesting already, and neither of them are as sharp and well-practiced adventurers as they might have been before the break started, but he tries not to think about that when he kneels beside the bed and starts uncording the laces of her boots.

. . .

All things considered, sobriety is far from the worst part of this pregnancy.

It’s a nuisance, drinking water when everyone else is indulging themselves, but she was never a particularly heavy drinker, only going three or four cups in when celebrating victories or drowning her sorrows. Tonight was an occasion for neither, and so she is perfectly happy with her coupe glass, filled with cold water and a lime wedge.

Cold drinks are a Whitestone luxury. For the most part, anywhere else in Tal’Dorei, you’d have to be content with a warm tavern cocktail, with whiskey and lemon and a layer of sediment sugar lining the bottom of the glass. They’re not quite out of winter, and so the desire for iceboxes has not truly begun to come in swing, but Vex, having long since gotten her fill of musty, lukewarm waterskins, isn’t complaining.

She has more important things to engage for attention: for one, she’s lost sight of Percival.

Percy doesn’t get drunk, which is not to say that he’s never drunk, only that he doesn’t  _ become  _ drunk. He’ll drink paint thinner for four hours, perfectly sober, and then, as soon as you turn away to talk to someone for just a moment, he’ll suddenly be pissed as a newt - and usually, he’ll be pissed as a newt three houses down the street.

But Vex’ahlia de Rolo made her way in the world as a tracker first and foremost, and she’ll be damned if she can’t find her own husband, stone cold sober, in a measly little tavern.

It’s been a long day celebrating Highsummer - Vex can still feel the skin on her face blisteringly warm from standing so close to the bonfires - and these days, she’s tired enough on her feet at the end of the day with or without needing to play a grand role as the champion of Pelor. And without everyone feeling it’s all the more appropriate to paw at her now for the fertility god aspect, even more than she already gets daily, ever since she started showing.

She’s tired, is the point. Tired enough that just finding her inebriated husband proves a challenge, especially since, unlike a wounded boar, he’s not leaving a trail of blood on the nearby foliage.

Or at least she hopes not.

The challenge is raised somewhat by the fact that so much of the bar is wearing masks, and so many of the mask-wearers are wearing Percy-themed masks especially. A woman in a white-and-gold beaked mask raises her drink at her when she passes, and Vex has to admit, it’s a bit unnerving. The masks are a relatively new addition to Highsummer, having been brought over only in the last year, meant to celebrate, she believes, the way Vox Machina disguised themselves, first as stricken peasants, and then as members of the royal family, in order to liberate Whitestone. Or maybe it was in reference to the Briarwoods, usurping under the guise of being proper royalty, and the unmasking of them by the city itself.

Either way there was a new tradition masks around the holiday itself, and there had been a big show of unmasking one another at the stroke of midnight. It was a lot of fun, and she has to admit - a little selfishly, having spent ten minutes outside the bar fawning over a hunter in a blue-feathered mask with a dog dressed in cloth armor - that she hopes the new tradition persists. Even if it does make spotting Percival a pain.

She finds him, eventually, by following the sound of singing.

He’s got another patron’s arm slung around his neck, and is following along with the lyrics of a song she recognizes to be  _ The Wild Rover,  _ which seems… apt. A little on the nose, even. She waits until he finishes the tune to interfere, enjoying the flush across his face when he notices her watching.

“Dear!” he says, slipping out of the cradle of the company that’s gathered around him. “There you are! I went looking for you.”

“Of course you went looking for me, darling,” she says, and she believes him. It’s how he usually ends up finding trouble when he’s this deep into his cups. “Come here”

He hip-checks a bar stool on the way over to her, which is as much of a sign for how far along he is as the sharp, antiseptic taste of his mouth when he presses his lips to hers. He tastes like rubbing liniment, or a disinfected barrel. When he breaks away, she says, “Good grief.”

“Sorry,” he apologizes, checking his own breath. “I may have overindulged.”

“So long as you’re still conscious and forming sentences, all is forgiven, Percy,” she says. “Who are your new friends?”

Percy smiles, then turns around with a flourish, followed by a short introduction that Vex truly does her best to keep track of, but inevitably gets swallowed in the commotion of the tavern. She nods along, and shakes hands, but there’s a point to which heightened perception gets to be a disadvantage, and she can’t quite keep along with the words being exchanged until the person across the length of the tavern stops reorganizing bottles behind the bar so damn loud.

“I hope he wasn’t bothering any of you poor souls,” she tells the broad-looking man with the Grog-esque face paint who had Percy halfway into a headlock just a moment ago. “Were you, my darling?”

“I wasn’t,” Percy says defensively, at the same time the man says, “Only a little bit, my Lady.”

Percy frowns, and Vex cups the side of his face. The corners of his lips pull up into a grin at her stroking his jawline with her thumb, and he leans his weight into her. “Mixed results, then,” she says. “I’ll take him off your hands.”

“You’re welcome to,” he says, winking. “He’s spoken very highly of you.”

“Has he now?”

“Very highly,” a woman with a mask covered in leaves of various types and color hung around her necks confirms. “And very relentlessly. Save our ears, please.”

“Traitors,” Percy says, sounding put out but too drunk to be upset, “traitors, the lot of you.”

Vex, who thinks that at least half of the accompaniment themselves fought, the night of the rebellion, cackles. “Alright, alright,” she says. She puts her arms around Percy’s waist and pulls him along. “That’s enough for one night, I think.”

The troupe manages to return the parting, and wishes them a happy holiday, followed by a volley of congratulations for the pregnancy, and another set for their upcoming vow renewal. Which, considering it is some months away from now, and that they’d yet to release official word of it to anyone outside of the family, meant that Percy’s lips had been loosened, quite significantly, by the vodka.

She waits until they’re out of the bar to bring it up, walking along quite contended before Percy stumbles on his feet and comes to a sudden stop. “What’s the matter?” she asks.

He only hums, bringing up a hand. Softly, he places his thumb at her forehead and smooths out the furrow she hadn’t noticed forming.

Slowly, he comes forward until his forehead is touching against hers, not leaning his wait over, but just pressing together. He asks, “What are you thinking about?”

She laughs. “This may be the second wedding you’ve blown the lid off, darling.”

Percy says, “Oh.”

The top three buttons of his shirt have come undone through the night, and as the loiter outside the tavern, she runs her hands up his chest and fingers at them, coming up and retuning each button to its place, all the way up to his throat. She rests a hand on his throat, then his jaw. He hasn’t shaved in some time, and his stubble is starting to grow in soft. “You do have a hard time keeping your mouth shut when it comes to these things,” she says.

Percy turns his face to kiss the palm of her hand. “I’m excited.”

“You’re also drunk,” she says, pinching his cheek. “Very, very drunk.”

He snorts, and leans away. There’s a short fence out in front of the tavern, and they come away long enough clamber up it, finding a place to sit that’s low enough for both of them to keep their feet on the ground. Useful for both of them, in this state.

“I love you very much,” Percy says, like he just remembered.

“I love you, too,” she says. “Dearly. Even when you drink machine sanitizer and talk about private things in public.”

“Not too private,” he says, a degree too loud, “I didn’t mention harnesses this time.”

Vex can just make out the sound of someone dropping a mug, somewhere behind them, and very quickly leaving it where it lay.

“No, not this time.”

“And I didn’t mention the -  _ mm _ .”

This far along, Vex thinks, he hardly needed to. 

There’s a part of Vex, the selfsame part that wanted to keep the elopement a secret, that wants this, too, to be private. It’s an unrealistic expectation, that she could serve such a public role and believe, on some level, that no-one would notice her pregnancy coming along, but it was something she wanted, nevertheless.

When she looks up again, Percy is looking at her with big, imploring eyes. “You’re unhappy,” he says.

“No, I am, I am, dear. I just -” Vex cuts herself off.

Percy edges closer, nearly overbalancing as he does so. He’s very open like this, but not as obtuse as she expects him to be. He doesn’t reach for her stomach as he comes near her, though he does stare at it pointedly. In his defense, he’s never minimized this whole situation, glorious body horror that it is, to just a bump, or a body she’s suddenly cohabitating in.

She says, “I’m scared, I think.”

“I am too,” Percy says, “deathly. We’re going to parents, you know!”

“We are! It’s  _ terrifying.  _ I have no idea how my mother did this on her own.”

She supposes that may be the root of it. That some maladaptive impulse expects someone to come take this kid away as soon as she gets hold of them, or perhaps that no-one will, and she’ll do poorly raising them herself, chase them off all on her lonesome. Between her mother and her father, she’s not entirely sure who's worse to model herself on.

“You’re not on your own, though,” Percy says. “You have the rest of Vox Machina, and Cassandra, and practically all of Whitestone.”

“And…?”

He stops to think. “And Trinket.”

“And  _ you.” _

She starts to think that maybe he’s sobering up, by the clever glint in his eye. “ _ Me?  _ No, no, I intend to disappear into the wilderness as soon as the pup’s out of you.”

He’s close enough that she can muffle her laughter in his shoulder, and when she looks up at him, his eyes are glassy and wet. “Of course, me,” he says, “I wouldn’t leave unless you told me to.”

“And if I told you to?”

“Well, I’d cry, probably. And then I’d try very hard to get you to change your mind.”

“Fair enough. I might have to keep you around then, just out of convenience, sloppy drunk that you are.”

Percy presses her face to her hair. He still smells like sanized wound, but she puts up with it, holds him by his waist. “Much easier, my light, I promise you. I have a liability to stay right where I am.”

“All the more if you fall asleep on me here. Come on, darling, let’s head home.”

It’s a whole thing, getting themselves up and off the fence and back on their feet, Percy swaying and her half-waddling, but they get it done without any grievous injury. They start to amble on towards the castle, which is nearest, when Percy looks at the moon and squints hard at it, trying to piece together a thought.

“Dear,” he says, “if I gave someone my keys, and I don’t remember who, that’s a problem, isn’t it?”

**Author's Note:**

> WOO, HAPPY WEDDING RENEWAL!


End file.
